Voodoo3 3000 vs. Matrox G450? Voodoo3 all the way. My eyesight is poor enough I couldn't tell the difference in image quality on the desktop and in office apps between a GeForce 2 and a Radeon 9500 Pro.

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derFunkenstein wrote:Voodoo3 3000 vs. Matrox G450? Voodoo3 all the way. My eyesight is poor enough I couldn't tell the difference in image quality on the desktop and in office apps between a GeForce 2 and a Radeon 9500 Pro.

You do realize that the V3 went up against the G400 and G400Max, which spanked everything out there. (Admittedly after the drivers had matured)

The Millennium I also spanked everything out there, and they were usually the choice before that as well. (Having some tough competition from S3 and #9 )

derFunkenstein wrote:Voodoo3 3000 vs. Matrox G450? Voodoo3 all the way. My eyesight is poor enough I couldn't tell the difference in image quality on the desktop and in office apps between a GeForce 2 and a Radeon 9500 Pro.

You do realize that the V3 went up against the G400 and G400Max, which spanked everything out there. (Admittedly after the drivers had matured)

The Millennium I also spanked everything out there, and they were usually the choice before that as well. (Having some tough competition from S3 and #9 )

The G400 vs. the Voodoo 3 wasn't a contest when they were both new parts, though. V3 was faster all around...but I had a Voodoo2 and a TNT back then.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

derFunkenstein wrote:Voodoo3 3000 vs. Matrox G450? Voodoo3 all the way. My eyesight is poor enough I couldn't tell the difference in image quality on the desktop and in office apps between a GeForce 2 and a Radeon 9500 Pro.

You do realize that the V3 went up against the G400 and G400Max, which spanked everything out there. (Admittedly after the drivers had matured)

The Millennium I also spanked everything out there, and they were usually the choice before that as well. (Having some tough competition from S3 and #9 )

The G400 vs. the Voodoo 3 wasn't a contest when they were both new parts, though. V3 was faster all around...but I had a Voodoo2 and a TNT back then.

No G400 still showed amazing D3D speed, it's just that Matrox's OpenGL sucked back then.

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I went from a Miro, now Pinnacle, 4MB (2D) card to a Voodoo Banshee and then a TNT2 Ultra, now i have a vanilla GF3 in my computer, made by 3D Power http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/absoluteg ... f3_2.shtml (ex 3dfx engineers) but the company doesn't exist anymore, their website is offline. I wish I knew what happened to them, they suddenly dissappeared.

"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." -- Stephen Hawking

Yep, the 2D image clarity of my old Voodoo3 card still compares favorably with any of the video cards I've used over the past few years. That includes various other S3, nVidia, ATI, and Matrox cards. I'd put the image quality roughly on par with Matrox, slightly ahead of ATI and nVidia's current cards, and light years ahead of nVidia's older (pre-GF3) cards, or anything S3-based.

This is why I still use my Voodoo3 card, in an old K6-III box that I use for remote VPN access. Being able to display the entire remote desktop in a window (using PC-Anywhere) without it getting blurred all to hell is a big plus.

I do think the V3 did have better 2D than the V5. You could tell just by performance that the V5 was all about brute force and the 2D suffered because of this. The V3 was just a much better designed card than the V5, and near the end of 3Dfx the quality did suffer.

AmishRakeFight wrote:I still have 2 voodoo 3 cards up and running! I sold my matrox G400 to my aunt years ago and she is still using it.

Yeah, I actually gave away my other Voodoo3 card, when I did a "freebie" system upgrade for my wife's niece. I'm sort of regretting that decision now... damn, should've given her my old TNT2 card instead!

AmishRakeFight wrote:I still have 2 voodoo 3 cards up and running! I sold my matrox G400 to my aunt years ago and she is still using it.

Yeah, I actually gave away my other Voodoo3 card, when I did a "freebie" system upgrade for my wife's niece. I'm sort of regretting that decision now... damn, should've given her my old TNT2 card instead!

Hehe yeh V3 has 2D image quality on it's side, TNT 2 is a bit better with 3D performance, not in all games though. TNT 2 apparently has pathetic image quality.

I have a TNT2 in one of my boxes and a V3 in the other, and the 2D is just horrible compared to the V3. It is in one of my folding boxes, and I can not stand doing anything on that box for extended periods of time as the display is so blurry. V3 all the way, that card kicks the TNT2 to the curb.

YBK wrote:Hehe yeh V3 has 2D image quality on it's side, TNT 2 is a bit better with 3D performance, not in all games though. TNT 2 apparently has pathetic image quality.

Yes, I can attest to the lousy image quality on the TNT2 (and early GeForce/GeForce2) cards. The card manufacturers were partly to blame (poor implementation of the lowpass EMI filters on the video outputs), but I'm convinced that the RAMDAC on the GPU contributed to the problem as well. Even after disabling the EMI filters (real geeks aren't afraid to take a soldering iron to their video cards! ) the image quality was still well below the 3Dfx, Matrox and ATI cards which were out at that time.

Well at least nowdays 2D is much better than it used to be, the 2D on my 9500 is excellent and I am very happy with it. It is a shame that it took so long for it to be as good as the old matrox and 3Dfx cards.

Starfalcon wrote:Well at least nowdays 2D is much better than it used to be, the 2D on my 9500 is excellent and I am very happy with it. It is a shame that it took so long for it to be as good as the old matrox and 3Dfx cards.

Historically, ATI actually hasn't been that bad... IMO nVidia and S3 were the worst offenders in terms of 2D image quality. nVidia apparently got their act together when they did the GeForce3, and S3 (now part of VIA) has ceased to be relevant for anything other than low end "integrated-everything" motherboards.

I still have my old Voodoo 3 in use inside of my old P3 600. Don't think I'm ever gonna give this card up. Heck, it even has passive cooling so I don't have to worry about a fan failing or making an extra noise.

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My V2's do not even have a heatsink on them, so those are even quieter than the passive cooling of the V3. It will be interesting what they will have to do in the future to keep the faster video cards cool.

bsdgeek wrote:You guys haven't seen 2D Image Quality until you see Parhelia (it's better than the G400Max)

I don't doubt that the image quality is good... but very few people are willing to shell out that kind of dough just for a slight improvement. The other vendors have closed the image quality gap considerably, so Matrox doesn't have the edge in this area that they've had historically.